Background

Ethnicity: Heisman's parents immigrated to the United States from the German state of Bavaria not long before his birth.

John William Heisman was born on October 23, 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Johann Michael Heissmann and Sara Lehr Heissman.

Education

John Heisman's family relocated from Cleveland to Titusville, Pennsylvania, in the 1870s, following the oil boom in the region, so, the childhood of the noted coach-to-be was spent in that area. Heisman's father established his trade as a cooper, or barrel maker. The business provided such notable companies as John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company with barrels and grew quickly to about 35 employees. In 1890, senior Heisman sold out his business and returned to Cleveland.

The first football games that John Heisman played were a mixture of soccer and rugby. He pursued his love affair with the game of football as a player for Titusville High School. A motivated student, he participated in baseball and gymnastics apart from football. Heisman was passionate about the development of the game of football, in particular, about the concept of being allowed to carry the ball, an innovation that was spreading among East Coast colleges at the time. Although Heisman's father considered football to be a brutal and barbaric sport, which in the early days of the game was not far from the truth, his disapproval, as well as Heisman's small stature, couldn't prevent that overflowing enthusiasm for the game.

Heisman, a salutatorian of his graduating class, finished high school in 1887. That same year, he enrolled at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. While there, he pursued his activity in athletics and continued to play his beloved football, as a lineman, in a club team within the university since the intercollegiate play had been dropped at the institution. After two years at Brown, in the fall, John Heisman transferred to the University of Pennsylvania with the intention of getting a law degree.

The choice of the university was perhaps influenced by both the school's strong football program and the national reputation of its law department. Heisman played football for the school, as substitute center, substitute center and tackle, and as a starting end sometimes, in that era when transfer restrictions didn't exist. He earned his law degree in the spring of 1892 after taking his final exams orally because of the poor eyesight.

Later in his life, while coaching at Oberlin Colege, Heisman followed a postgraduate course in art.

Career

The start of John Heisman's career in coaching can be counted from 1892 when he accepted the job offer of the Oberlin College to serve as its first football coach. He did so, instead of beginning the practice of law, following the doctor's pronouncement that he needed to rest his eyes for two years for an appropriate treatment after the injury. In addition to joining the football staff, Heisman also played on the football team, the practice that was legal at the time. Heisman quickly turned Oberlin's football team into a winning one, and it was during these early days of coaching that he developed many of his innovative strategies.

In 1892, Oberlin won Ohio State's team twice under Heisman's leadership, both times keeping the rival scoreless. Other than a year Heisman spent at Buchtel College (later known as the University of Akron). During that season, 1893-94, the Akron Zips managed to beat Ohio State 12-6. Heisman also prepared the baseball team of the college to a state championship. He stayed with Oberlin until 1895, even without a regular salary for his job there. At Akron, his salary was $750, though the faculty of that college wasn't very supportive of the sport.

Heisman left Oberlin for Auburn University, the Alabama Polytechnic Institute at the time, where he served for about five years. Though Heisman followed three previous football coaches at the institution, he became its first full-time head coach. His record during the service at Auburn was one of 12 wins, 4 losses, and 2 ties.

It was while coaching at Auburn that Heisman discovered for the first time what would come to be known as a "forward pass." The observation happened during a game between Georgia and North Carolina in 1895. Realizing that the pass could open up the field during a game, Heisman wrote to Walter Camp, the then chair of the rules committee, and asked him to make it legal. The forward pass was finally confirmed as a legal play in the game of football by 1906.

Auburn's team was defeated only once during the 1896 season, and that was by Georgia, the squad that Heisman would eventually lead after he left Auburn. Auburn's team canceled the rest of the next season because of the important financial losses resulted from the cancellation of the rematch with Georgia on Thanksgiving Day. The year 1898 was small but worthy for the team with an average weight of 148 pounds. The Auburn's team won twice in the season, against Georgia Tech and Georgia, and lost to North Carolina.

After leaving Auburn, Heisman invested almost all his money to raising the tomatoes business in Texas. In about 1900, Walter Riggs, the Clemson University professor, who had played under Heisman at Auburn, invited him to head the Clemson's football team. When he coached football as well as baseball teams at Clemson for the 1900 through 1903 seasons, Heisman enjoyed a 19-3-2 record. His 1900 team had a 6-0 season, the first undefeated season in its history.

Georgia Tech team, defeated by Clemson 73-0 in the last game of the 1903 season, offered John Heisman the position as head coach beginning with the next year. Heisman accepted the offer at a salary of $2,250 per year, plus 30 percent of net receipts to coach its athletic team. He brought his family to Atlanta where he would coach the best football games of his career, as well as baseball and basketball varsity teams, through 17 seasons.

After the divorce with his first wife in 1918, John Heisman relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he became head coach of a football team at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, in 1920. Three years later, he occupied the same post at Washington and Jefferson College, which was known at the time to be a serious football rival, having participated in the Tournament of Roses game in 1921.

Shortly after his second marriage in 1924, Heisman took his last coaching position, with Rice University in Houston, Texas. His five-year contract for $9,000 presumed his residence during spring training and for the football season, giving him a possibility to get involved in a sporting goods business in New York City. The two initial seasons with the team brought unsatisfying results, and after a third even more disastrous season Heisman resigned. He left behind his college football coaching career and moved to New York.

Over the next two years, John Heisman managed a successful sporting goods business in the city. He was then assigned the first athletic director of New York's Downtown Athletic Club (DAC). In 1933, the former coach contributed to the organization of the first Touchdown Club of New York and a year before his death established the Downtown Athletic Club trophy awarded to the best college football player east of the Mississippi. Serving as Downtown Athletic Club's inaugural director, Heisman penned a book, The Principles of Football, and wrote columns for different popular magazines.

Heisman was also a Shakespearean actor and performed in a number of acting troupes in between coaching sports teams. In 1897, he established the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (Auburn) Dramatic Club where he played the lead part in David Garrick by Thomas William Robertson that same year. He then appeared in the stageplays set at the Herald Square Theater on Broadway, the Columbus Theater in Harlem, and also collaborated with the Mordaunt-Block Stock Company, the Macdonald Stock Company, the Thanouser-Hatch Company of Atlanta, the Spooner Dramatic Company, and the Dixie Stock Company.

Early in the 1900s, Heisman served as a manager of Crump's Park Stock Company and his own Heisman Theatrical Enterprise. The latter was preceded by the Heisman Dramatic Stock Company in Clemson and the Heisman Stock Company, established respectively in 1903 and 1904.

Achievements

• 

  Called the "pioneer of Southern football" by American sportswriter Fuzzy Woodruff, John Heisman was a coach whose 36-year career in college football marked some of the most significant changes in this American game.
  
  His team at Georgia Technical University (Georgia Tech) managed to make a series of 33 victorious games including its record-setting win of 222-0 over a powerful Cumberland College squad in 1916. The Georgia Tech team was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records for such a feat.
  
  The major contributions of Heisman to the college sport (some of which were translated to the professional play of the game), included displaying downs and yards on the scoreboard, using both guards as blockers for the runner, drawing up a pre-set series of plays to start a game, sending signals from the sideline, the long count, snapping the ball directly to the quarterback, and, finally, legalizing the forward pass.
  
  Heisman was also the first to introduce the word "hike" for calling the plays. The double pass, interference on end runs, the Heisman shift (a precursor of the T formation), and the division of game halves into quarters also came from Heisman. The "hidden-ball trick" used by Heisman for the first time was later classified illegal.
  
  On December 10, 1936, just about two months after his death, the Downtown Athletic Club trophy inaugurated by Heisman in 1935 was renamed the "Heisman Memorial Trophy" to honor the legendary coach. The Auburn University is the only school where Heisman had coached whose players received the trophy named after him (Pat Sullivan in 1971 and Bo Jackson in 1985). In 1954, John Heisman was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Principles of Football 1922

Views

One of the beloved strategies applied by John Heisman was that of using a player in one position for more than simply that one position. When Heisman coached at Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, his team was once removed from the game after he refused to remove a black player for a scheduled match against Lee College in Virginia.

Quotations: "When in doubt, punt!"

"When you find your opponent's weak spot, hammer it."

"What is this? It is a prolate spheroid, an elongated sphere in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing. Gentlemen, it is better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football."

"To break training without permission is an act of treason."

"The coach should be masterful and commanding, even dictatorial. He has no time to say 'please' or 'mister.' At times he must be severe, arbitrary, and little short of a czar."

"Don't cuss. Don't argue with the officials. And don't lose the game."

Personality

John Heisman's dictatorial style with his players and his habit of running up the score on his opponents affected his popularity badly from time to time. Nevertheless, since the beginning of his coaching career, while serving at Oberlin College, he figured out how to improve his public image. He actively sought out relationships with the local media which quickly appreciated his ability to extend the game of collegiate football into new areas of strategy and style.

Positioning himself as an actor as well, Heisman who performed in the theatre in between coaching sports teams, used his acting skills to encourage his players by pronouncing major theatrical speeches. He was perceived by many as an eccentric and melodramatic person with "the temperament, panache, and audacity of the showman."

Physical Characteristics: John Heisman had bad eyesight because of an injury caused by the galvanic lighting system that he suffered playing a game between the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University during his university years. His nose became flat as a result of a struck in the face by a football in a game for the Penn State football team.

Quotes from others about the person

• Edwin Pope, sportswriter: "A 158-pound center [...] in constant dread that his immediate teammates – guards weighing 212 and 243 – would fall on him."
  
  Gene Griessman, author and professional speaker: "He would throw five men into a sweep ahead of the man with the ball, a play subsequently copied widely, but Heisman seem to have originated."
  
  The Oberlin Review, 1892: "Mr. Heisman has entirely remade our football. He has taught us scientific football."
  
  The College Football Hall of Fame: "[Heisman] stands only behind Amos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner, and Walter Camp as a master innovator of the brand of football of his day."

Connections

John Heisman was married twice. He met his first wife-to-be, actress Evelyn McCollum, in the theater in Clemson, South Carolina. They married on October 24, 1903 and lived together for fifteen years. Carlisle, Evelyn's son from the previous marriage, would stay close to Heisman long after their divorce.

Edith Maora Cole, Heisman's next sweetheart, was a student at Buchtel College where he coached an American football team during the 1893 and 1894 seasons. The couple postponed the marriage because of Edith's problems with tuberculosis. The wedding ceremony took place only in 1924.

Father:

Johann Michael Heissman

(born 1834 – died 1914)

Johann Heissman was the son of Baron von Bogart, a German nobleman, who lost his inheritance and his family when he chose a love marriage instead of title.

Mother:

Sara Lehr Heissman

(born 1844 – died 1897)

Sara's grandfather, the Mater of Knauge, had been an aide to Napoleon, but wasn't titled.

Brother:

Daniel Edwin Heisman

(born 1862 – died 1892)

Brother:

Michael Cornelius Heisman

(born 1872)

ex-wife:

Evelyn Heisman

(née McCollum; nicknamed Cox; born 1870 – died 1926)

An actress in a stock company in Clemson, South Carolina, Evelyn performed under the alias of Evelyn Barksdale. She was a widow and had one son named Carlisle.

Wife:

Edith Maora Heisman

(née Cole; born 1869 – died 1963)

colleague:

Walter Riggs

(born January 24, 1873 – died January 22, 1924)

Walter Riggs, born Walter Merritt Riggs, founded Clemson University's first football team in 1895 and then served as its head coach in 1896 and in 1899. He later headed the University, from 1910 to 1924.

References

• Heisman: The Man Behind the Trophy The authorized and definitive biography of the man whose life has been memorialized by the eponymous Heisman Trophy, written by his great-nephew.
  2012
• Heisman's First Trophy: The Game that Launched Football in the South A sports novel based on a historically significant football game played 100 years ago in which tiny Cumberland University, led by a bunch of Kappa Sig fraternity brothers, squared off in Atlanta against a Georgia Tech team destined for a national championship and coached by the legendary John Heisman.
  2016
• Creating the Big Game: John W. Heisman and the Invention of American Football The book is much more than the story of John Heisman's 36-year coaching career. It is also the story of how an indigenous American public ritual, the Big Game, came about and how college football evolved into the complex, problematic, and highly structured big business that it is today.
  1992
• The Heisman Trophy Trust Website